


surviving is the only war we can afford

by donnamosss



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/F, anyway clarke and lexa r soulmates and theyre in love and also both alive and they Make It Work, it's been 3 weeks when will i be Free
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-27
Updated: 2016-03-27
Packaged: 2018-05-29 11:45:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6373468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/donnamosss/pseuds/donnamosss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>it’s not easy.</p><p>it’s the furthest thing from easy. </p><p>at the end of the day they are two girls who weren’t even fully grown before they took the weight of the world on their shoulders.</p>
            </blockquote>





	surviving is the only war we can afford

**Author's Note:**

> this fic is dedicated to the memory of jason rothenberg  
> he's not dead but he will be once when i find him

we need each others’

breathing, warmth, surviving   

is the only war

we can afford, stay

 

walking with me, there is almost   

time 

-“they are hostile nations” margaret atwood

 

* * *

 

“this won’t be easy,” abby says when she finds out about the two of them. the words are harsh and they seem harsher in the cold fluorescent light of arkadia’s medical bay and clarke stiffens at them, though she is unsure of exactly what kind of response she had been expecting. the confession had spilled out of clarke’s mouth shortly after she had arrived in arkadia (still slightly drunk on lexa, on lexa’s lips on her lips and lexa’s hipbones under her hands and lexa’s voice, soft and gentle when she says her name) half because she knows her mother will find out soon anyway and she’d rather have it be from her and half because she loves the new and exciting and hopeful thrill that shoots through her whenever she says _lexa and i_ (something about telling her mother had made this all seem real and solid and clarke holds tight to that feeling, hands clenched white-knuckled around it) _._ now abby stands among the hospital beds and the beeping monitors, all thin lips and tight shoulders and tired eyes. she looks old, clarke realizes suddenly. the ground has aged them all.

 

abby’s words ring in clarke’s ears and there are a million retorts on the tip of her tongue (like: you think i don’t know that? like: you think that’s not always always in the back of my mind? like: you think i don’t think about that every night every time we kiss every time she looks at me? like: do you think i’m that naïve, that i thought this would be _easy_?) but she bites back every last one, because something about the gentle way abby grabs her hand, something about the rough hug abby pulls her into, the way abby buries her face in clarke’s hair, reminds her that her mother once lost someone she loved by her own hand.

 

//

 

it’s not easy.

 

it’s the furthest thing from easy.

 

at the end of the day they are two girls who weren’t even fully grown before they took the weight of the world on their shoulders. they are scarred and bent and broken in different places, and they are healed and healing in some, and their broken bones have set into strange sharp shapes in others. in some places, they still have open wounds, oozing and ugly. their love is not a magic balm, not a cure-all, it is a careful categorization of the places they are hurting, an ever-growing list of each others’ most tender bruises and deepest cuts. they are scarred and scarring and hurt and hurting and their love is messy and difficult and complicated. 

 

sometimes it feels like a battlefield, the two of them. they draw lines in the sand and size each other but somehow, miraculously, they always seem to end up on the same side.

 

//

 

it’s not easy and it never will be, but clarke doesn’t think there’s another option. it is hard, so hard, to see each other come home bleeding, to bandage one another’s wounds, to soothe each other after nightmares, to live day-to-day, to sometimes say goodbye and not know when they will be together again. it is more difficult than clarke ever imagined to try to lead their two peoples to peace, to face the fact that to accomplish this, they must sometimes compartmentalize their feelings for each other. 

 

but what is the other option? doing all this alone? the path they have chosen is hard, but the only other one available is unimaginable—clarke is not one to wax poetic about fate but she doesn’t think there’s a world where the two of them can exist without existing together. lexa left her mark on clarke, and clarke on lexa, and there’s simply no way they could leave one another after that. they are bound intractably on some kind of cellular level ( _maybe we came from the same star_ lexa whispers to her, and clarke rolls her eyes because she has to pretend that she hates that cheesy shit).

 

and so they make the most of it. they steal moments where they can. their life unfolds in hands held under tables in war rooms, in “clarke can i speak to you privately in my tent?”s, in late night confessions and early morning murmurs, in afternoons they manage to slip away from the watchful eyes of lexa’s guards in polis. they live in these small in-between moments, they find space to breathe, away from the smell of blood and the heat of battle and the weight of their responsibilities and their titles and their people.

 

//

 

clarke sometimes thinks of the way her mother hugged her when she told her about lexa, about the desperation in her voice that made it clear that abby thought this—whatever she was doing with lexa—would destroy her. abby was wrong, but only because she didn’t know that this is the only way clarke knows how to survive—these moments she and lexa have twisted into some kind of life, into some kind of future. it is the hardest thing either of them has ever done, but they do it together, and that counts for something.

**Author's Note:**

> it's been 3 weeks & i thought i would be Over It by now but :) clearly :) not :) anyway this is just gay stream of consciousness about how much clarke and lexa love each other which is apparently all i can fckin write so i hope u enjoyed 
> 
> im on tumblr @sapphiclexas


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